Suspicious powder mailed to Kyenge

Northern League says feud is strictly political

(ANSA) - Rome, January 15 - Firefighters are on the scene
after a letter leaking suspicious powder addressed to Italy's
first black cabinet member, Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge,
was delivered to the premier's office in Rome on Wednesday.
The minister, who has been the victim of a long series of
racist slurs since being sworn in, was quick to call the letter
"a threat to democracy".
Members of the anti-immigrant Northern League have often
been behind verbal abuse, with one leader likening her to an
orangutan last year.
On Tuesday the party's newspaper La Padania published her
daily schedule as Italy's parliament debated abolishing a
League-sponsored law criminalizing illegal immigration.

Kyenge, once an undocumented immigrant herself, has been at
the forefront of the drive to repeal that law.
"Kyenge is in favor of Negritude like in France, but we can
do without it," Northern League Senate whip Massimo Bitonci said
during the debate on the floor.
The center-left Democratic Party (PD), which is in the
majority of Italy's left-right coalition, promptly blasted the
League and Bitonci's statement as racist and subversive.

On Wednesday the League defended the term 'Negritude', a
movement founded by blacks in France in the 1930s that embraced
black identity and rejected French colonial racism.
"Negritude is not a racist term," said La Padania
Editor-in-Chief Aurora Lussana. "Ours is a political attack on
Kyenge for her absence of government action. She needs to put an
end to this victimization. We've also gone after Development
Minister Flavio Zanonato. I'd like to hear the choruses of
indignation also for someone from the Veneto region".
Lombardy Governor Roberto Maroni, the former leader of the
Northern League, also defended the paper's decision to publish
Kyenge's schedule.
"Her appointments were on the ministry website. I don't
understand why opposing her must be considered racist while
opposing me is considered democracy," he said.